imagine anyone being so deranged as to do such a thing because of a social envy, even over Mr. Corde.”
He was still sitting opposite her, only a few feet away. “Can you think of any kind of sane reason for a person to do it, ma’am?”
There was silence again. The fire crackled and fell in sparks. He reached forward for the tongs and put on another piece of coal. It was a luxury to burn fuel without thought of price. He put on a second piece, and a third. The fire blazed up in yellow heat.
“No,” she said gently. “You are quite right.”
Before he could say anything else, the door swung open and a stout old lady in black came in, banging ahead of herself with a stick. She surveyed Pitt with disdain as he automatically stood up.
Alicia stood up also. “Mama, this is Inspector Pitt, from the police.” She turned to Pitt. “My mother-in-law, Lady Fitzroy-Hammond.”
The old lady did not move. She did not intend to be introduced to a policeman as if he were a social acquaintance, and certainly not in what she still considered her own house.
“Indeed,” she said sourly. “I had assumed so. I imagine you have some duties to attend to, Alicia? The house does not grind to a halt because someone has died, you know. You cannot expect the servants to supervise themselves! Go and see to the menus for the day and that the maids are properly employed. There was dust on the window ledge in the upstairs landing yesterday. I soiled my cuff on it!” She drew in her breath. “Well, don’t stand there, girl. If the policeman wants to see you again, he can call again!”
Alicia glanced at Pitt, and he shook his head fractionally. She accepted his dismissal with the civility and the respect for the old that had been bred in her. After she was gone, the old lady waddled over to the settee and sat down, still holding her stick.
“What are you here for?” she demanded. She had on a white lace cap, and Pitt noticed that underneath it her hair was not yet dressed. He guessed she had heard his arrival reported by a maid and risen hurriedly in order not to miss him.
“To see if I can discover who disinterred your son,” he replied baldly.
“What in goodness! — Do you imagine it was one of us?” Her disgust at his stupidity was immense, and she took care he should be aware of it.
“Hardly, ma’am,” he answered levelly. “It is a man’s job. But I think it very likely it was directed at one of you. Since it has happened twice, we cannot assume it coincidence.”
She banged her stick on the floor. “You should investigate!” she said with satisfaction, her fat cheeks tight inside their skin. “Find out everything you can. A lot of people seem to be what they aren’t. I would start with a Mr. Dominic Corde, if I were you.” Her eyes never wavered from his face. “Much too smooth, that one. After Alicia’s money, shouldn’t wonder. Take a good look at him. Sniffing round here before poor Augustus was dead, long before! Turning her head with his handsome face and easy manners-stupid girl! As if a face were worth anything. Why, when I was her age I knew twenty just like him.” She snapped her fingers sharply. “Courts of Europe are full of them; grow a crop of them every summer, just like potatoes. Good for a season, then they’re gone. Rot! Unless they marry some rich woman who’s taken in by them. You go and inquire into his means, see what he owes!”
Pitt raised his eyebrows. He would have given a week’s pay to have been rude to her. Unfortunately, it would have been a lifetime’s.
“Do you think he could have disinterred Lord Augustus?” he asked innocently. “I don’t see why he should.”
“Don’t be such an idiot!” she spat. “If anything, he murdered him! Or put that silly girl up to it! I dare say someone knows and dug up Augustus to show it.”
He faced her without blinking. “Did you know, ma’am?”
She glared at him with stone-faced anger, while she decided which emotion to show.
“Dig up my own son!” she said at last. “You are a barbarian! A cretin!”
“No, ma’am.” Pitt refused to rise to her bait. “You mistake me. I meant, did you suspect that your son had been murdered?”
Suddenly she realized the trap, and her temper vanished. She looked at him with wary little eyes. “No, I did not. Not at the time. Although now I am beginning to consider the possibility.”
“So are we, ma’am,” Pitt stood up. He needed to learn everything he could, but venomous gossip from this old woman would only cloud the issue so early on. Murder was no more yet than a possibility, and there were still others left-hatred, or simply vandalism.
She snorted, held out her hand to be helped up, then remembered he was a policeman and withdrew it again, climbing to her feet unaided. She banged her stick on the floor.
“Nisbett!”
The ubiquitous maid appeared as if she had been leaning against the door.
“Show this man out,” the old lady ordered, lifting her stick in the air to point. “And then bring me a cup of chocolate up to my room. I don’t know, what’s the matter with the world; it gets colder every winter. It never used to be like this. We knew how to heat our houses properly!” She stumped out without looking at Pitt again.
Pitt followed Nisbett into the hallway and was about to go out when he heard voices in the withdrawing room to his left. One was a man’s, not loud but very clear, with words precisely spoken. It brought back a tide of memory-it could only be Dominic Corde.
He gave Nisbett a flashing smile, leaving her startled and not a little alarmed, and turned sharply to the door, brushed it with his knuckles in the briefest of knocks, and strode in.
Dominic was standing with Alicia by the fireplace. They both looked round with surprise as he burst in. Alicia flushed, and Dominic made as if to demand an explanation; then he recognized Pitt.
“Thomas!” His voice rose a little in surprise. “Thomas Pitt!” Then his composure returned and he smiled, putting his hand out; it was genuine, and Pitt’s dislike evaporated in spite of himself. But he could not afford to forget why he was here. There might be murder, and either one of these two, or even both, could be involved. Even if it were only grave robbing-then surely they were the intended victims of malice.
He took Dominic’s outstretched hand. “Good morning, Mr. Corde.”
Dominic was quite innocent, as he had always been. “Good morning. How is Charlotte?”
Pitt felt a strange mixture of elation, because Charlotte was his wife now, and resentment, because Dominic asked so easily, so naturally. But after all, he had lived in the same house with her all the years of his marriage to Sarah; he had seen her grow up from an adolescent to a young woman. And all the time it had never entered his head that Charlotte was infatuated with him.
But this was different; he was thirty now, surely more mature, wiser to his effect upon women? And this was Alicia, not his young sister-in-law.
“In excellent health, thank you,” Pitt replied. He could not resist adding, “And Jemima is two years old and full of conversation.”
Dominic was a little startled. Perhaps he had not thought of Charlotte with children. He and Sarah had not had any-instantly Pitt regretted his bragging. Already, with these few emotion-driven words, he had made detachment impossible, destroyed the professionalism he had intended to observe.
“I hope you’re well?” He floundered a little. “This is a very wretched business about Lord Fitzroy- Hammond.”
Dominic’s face colored, then the blood drained away. “Ghastly,” he agreed. “I hope you can find whoever did it and have him put away. Surely he must be mad and not too hard to recognize?”
“Unfortunately, insanity is not like the pox,” Pitt replied. “It doesn’t give you a rash that can be seen by the eye.”
Alicia stood silently, still absorbing the fact that the two men obviously knew each other and that it was no chance or merely formal acquaintance.
“Not by the untrained eye,” Dominic agreed. “But you are not untrained! And haven’t you doctors, or something?”
“Before you can do anything with a disease, you need to be familiar with it,” Pitt pointed out. “And grave robbing is not something that happens more than once in a policeman’s career.”
“What about selling them for medical research, wasn’t there a trade? I’m sorry, Alicia-” he apologized.
“Resurrectionists? That was quite a while ago,” Pitt replied. “They get cadavers quite legally now.”
“Then it can’t be that.” Dominic’s shoulders slumped. “It’s grisly. Do you think-no, it can’t be. They didn’t
